


the things that comfort us

by hudders-and-hiddles (huddersandhiddles)



Series: Tumbling Hudders [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Feels, Hurt/Comfort, John visits Baker Street, John's Jumpers, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Post-Reichenbach, Sad with a Happy Ending, Sherlock on the run, Sherlock's Scarves, Sherlock's return
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 14:24:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4482668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huddersandhiddles/pseuds/hudders-and-hiddles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock takes one of John's jumpers with him when he leaves to dismantle Moriarty's network. One day, John notices it's missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This comes from my expanding collection of tumblr ficlets. It has therefore not been beta'ed or Britpicked. The idea came from a headcanon an anon sent to [57circlesofhell](http://57circlesofhell.tumblr.com) that I decided to fic.

Some days Sherlock is so preoccupied with dismantling Moriarty’s network that he doesn’t have time to think about anything else. He forgets to eat. He forgets to sleep. On those days, he could almost pretend that he’s back home on a case, except now it always ends with  _him_ as the killer.

But each “case” always comes to its inevitable conclusion and brings with it days of physical and mental exhaustion, though sleep is often still so hard to find. Sherlock has tried everything he can think of to make the sleep come. He’s closed his eyes and focused on the quiet murmur of the television in a shoddy motel, hoping the soft sounds of normalcy would lull him to sleep. He’s tried relaxation techniques he read about online when he once managed to sneak into a public library after hours. He’s brewed chamomile tea after discovering some in one of his target’s homes. He’s tried drinking warm milk—disgusting by the way. He’s even counted bloody sheep. Nothing works very well, and no matter how tired he is, he often manages no more than 2 or 3 hours at a time before his mind pulls him back into the here and now. He’s considered turning to drugs—sleeping pills, not anything stronger—but he doesn’t want to dull his mind or leave himself more vulnerable than absolutely necessary.

 

*************************

 

Removing the most recent target had proven particularly difficult, and Sherlock has now been awake for nearly 4 days straight without so much as a cat nap. He is beyond exhausted and desperately in need of sleep, but as usual, it won’t come, and he grinds his teeth in frustration. If John were here, he’d know how to fix this.

John.

Sherlock misses John more than he allows himself to admit. He misses the way that John helped to take care of him—he could certainly use a bit of that right now. He misses the way that John always seemed to keep him grounded. Centered. Focused. He could use that now, too. He misses John’s steady hand and perfect aim and knows that this mission would be easier with his friend by his side. But most of all he misses their easy companionship, the way John just seems to understand and somehow appreciate him, the way even John’s silence can fill him with a warmth like sunshine, the way sparks ignite along his spine when those deep blue eyes find his, the way that smile makes his breath catch in his chest, the way that scent speaks to him of adventure and loyalty and caring and home.

That scent.

_Oh._

Sherlock pulls John’s jumper from where he stored it in his bag so many months ago now. The day he left London, he had paid a member of his homeless network to sneak into the flat while John was staying at Stamford’s and bring back John’s fluffy, oatmeal-colored jumper. Under Mycroft’s prying eyes, Sherlock had carefully packed it away, knowing that he was giving away all too much about his feelings but unable to stop himself all the same. Since then, it’s been in his bag. He hasn’t even taken it out to look at it until now, but it’s been a comfort to him just to know that it’s there, that he carries a little piece of home—a piece of John—with him wherever he goes.

It’s not Sherlock’s favorite jumper. That would be the deep red cardigan that John always wears over those appalling plaid shirts, the one that John now always wears in Sherlock’s mind palace. But that’s John’s favorite, too, and if Sherlock had absconded with it, John surely would have noticed. This one though, John hardly ever wears anymore, and even though it’s not Sherlock’s favorite, it is special. This is the jumper John was wearing the night that he moved in. The night that Sherlock cured him of his limp. The night that John shot a cabbie to save his life.

The night that Sherlock fell in love with him.

He presses his face into the scratchy wool and inhales deeply. John. Beautiful, wonderful, perfect John.

Sherlock curls into a ball on the bed and hugs the jumper tightly to his chest, absently rubbing his fingers back and forth over the cuff of one sleeve. Instead of counting sheep, tonight Sherlock decides to count the number of times John has called him amazing, each one stored in perpetuity in that John-shaped room in his brain. He only makes it to five before glorious sleep pulls him under.

 

*************************

 

For the next eleven months, every time another target has been removed, Sherlock curls up with John’s jumper and finally allows himself to sleep.

 

*************************

 

Sherlock wakes to the sound of wood splintering as someone attempts to kick down his door. Instantly alert, he bolts upright, tosses his few scattered possessions into his bag, and throws himself out of the window on the far end of the room, silently thankful that he had claimed a room on the ground floor of the abandoned cabin rather than one on the upper storey. He hurtles toward the cover of the forest, desperate to put some distance between him and his pursuer. He isn’t lucky enough to escape unseen, however, and soon there are heavy footfalls all around him. Distantly, he can hear a helicopter approaching and knows that no matter how hard or fast or far he runs, there is no escape now.

When he is surrounded and on his knees, one of his captors roughly pulls the bag from his shoulder. Sherlock’s eyes go wide as he realizes exactly what is being taken from him. “No, please,” he cries, scrabbling to grab on to any piece of the bag he can catch and earning himself a brutal kick to the stomach and the sharp punch of the butt of a gun to his temple. He doubles over and tries to ignore the blinding pain, thinking only of the one tangible piece of John that he has left—his one connection to his real life, the one thing that reminds him what this has all been for, the one and only comfort he’s allowed himself. As his captors shove him to his feet, he wonders how he’ll ever sleep again.

He doesn’t realize he’s said this out loud until one of the men chuckles darkly. “Don’t worry. Sleep is going to be the least of your concerns, my friend.”


	2. Chapter 2

John wakes up early today, not that that’s unusual—he sleeps as little as possible these days to try to keep the nightmares at bay. It doesn’t work, but he allows himself to think that it helps anyway.

He doesn’t want to get up. His bed is warm, one of the few comforts he can find amongst his misery, and a large part of him wants to just lie here forever, until he dies of boredom or hunger or grief. But he is supposed to have lunch with Harry today, and if he cancels on her again, she’s threatened to come to the flat and never leave. John wants to be left alone, and if the easiest way to accomplish that is to spend one lunch with his sister, then that’s what he’s going to do.

He hesitantly leaves the warm cocoon of his bed to find that it is a brisk, January morning. He’s going to need a thick jumper to even consider facing it. Stumbling to his wardrobe and throwing the doors wide, he scans the hangers, bleary-eyed, for his warmest, fuzziest jumper—the oatmeal-colored one he wore the day he moved… in… to…

A wave of sorrow crashes over him, and he collapses heavily back down on his bed. Some days he still can’t even think of Sherlock’s name without his eyes welling up. He gives himself a moment to wallow before he shoves his grief back down, locking it deep inside so that he can try to get through today without having a complete breakdown. It’s a battle he fights over and over every day. Some days he wins the fight. And some days… Some days he dulls his loss in the bottom of a bottle.

John goes back to the wardrobe to find his jumper, willing himself not to think about that first night at Baker Street. He runs his fingers along each garment, gently separating them as he tries to find the right one. Blue and white stripes. Black v-neck. Deep red cardigan (his favorite).

No oatmeal cable-knit.

John starts again, pushing each hanger apart from the others in search of his jumper. When he gets to the end, he moves to the drawers, wondering if it somehow got mixed in with his socks or his pants. But there’s nothing out of place, everything folded and stored with military precision. Where could it have gone?

Thinking back though, he can’t even remember packing it up before he left 221B. Maybe it’s still there somewhere?

Even though he hasn’t been back there in weeks, John finds himself heading out the door and on his way to Baker Street before he has a chance to really think about what he’s doing. He just needs to know if his jumper is there. It seems important. And it has to be there. But he needs to know for sure.

 

*************************

 

John doesn’t stop at the door to the flat, refusing to give the memories time to crawl out from all the dark corners. He heads straight up the stairs to his old room and pulls open the wardrobe to find it bare. He looks under the bed. Behind the door. In the drawer of the nightstand. There’s nothing to find, not even dust bunnies.

He plods back down the stairs and takes a deep breath to steel himself before opening the door to the sitting room. John methodically searches under the sofa, the coffee table, the desk, his chair. No, not  _his_  chair anymore— _the_  chair. Sher… the  _other_  chair. The kitchen table. He searches the bookshelves, the drawers, even the kitchen cabinets, and finds nothing. It’s not in the cabinet in the bathroom either.

There’s only one place left to look, the place he's avoided entirely since Sherlock… left. But John came here to find his jumper, and he can’t leave without at least checking all possible hiding places. He doesn’t know why his jumper would be in Sherlock’s bedroom anyway, but weirder things have happened where Sherlock is concerned.

With a trembling hand, he turns the knob and pushes the door wide. The strength of Sherlock’s scent that wafts out to greet him is a slap in the face and a warm embrace all at once, and John’s knees nearly buckle. It’s clear Mrs. Hudson hasn’t been in here at all. Nothing has been dusted or cleaned or tidied. Everything is just as Sherlock left it. The bed sheets are rumpled, and John has to resist the urge to curl up there and never leave, living out the last of his days surrounded by the scent of the man he loved but never got to tell.

He forces his weak legs to carry him to the wardrobe, where he finds a row of impeccably tailored suit jackets, beautifully streamlined trousers, and impossibly tight shirts. Oh how John appreciated those shirts, the way they pulled taut across Sherlock’s lean chest, looking for all the world like the buttons would give way under the stress at any moment. His fingers walk across expensive hangers, and at the far end he comes across something odd. This brown gingham shirt isn’t anywhere close to being the kind of thing Sherlock would wear, but it does look extraordinarily like a shirt that John himself owns. Thinking back to his morning spent rifling through his own wardrobe, he realizes that he didn’t see this shirt hanging there. Which means that this shirt right here is  _his_  shirt. Hanging in  _Sherlock’s_  wardrobe. Why would his shirt be in Sherlock’s wardrobe? There’s no way it got mixed up in the laundry--as if Sherlock had done laundry a day in his life--and it's not as if anyone else would have mistaken this as something Sherlock would wear. Clearly it was put here on purpose, and as the room has been untouched for so long, it seems that Sherlock must have been the one to put it here.

John is still puzzling over why Sherlock would have stolen his shirt, when he notices something else odd. Beyond this shirt is an empty hanger. That in and of itself isn’t all that strange, but the oatmeal-colored fuzz stuck to it certainly is. There’s more fuzz caught in the door hinge, too, and though John may not be a detective, he knows without a doubt where that fuzz came from. Spurred on by this clue, John searches in every potential hiding spot he can find in Sherlock’s room, but his efforts come up short and eventually he has to conclude that the jumper isn’t here. It was, but now it’s not. Just like Sherlock.

John knows he probably should be angry that Sherlock, for some reason, stole his clothes and, worse, saw fit to hide them somewhere that John can’t seem to find. But he’s not. Not really. Instead, he feels calmer than he has in weeks. He has absolutely no way of knowing what has happened to his jumper, but not knowing allows him to imagine, and so he imagines that maybe Sherlock took the jumper with him when he. When he jumped. He drove John away that day at Bart’s—a ruse to get him out of the way so that Sherlock could go up to the roof on his own—but maybe he didn’t want to be completely alone after all. Maybe part of him did want John there. Wanted some kind of comfort from the man he had called his only friend not so long ago. It’s a strange kind of solace to imagine that some little, inanimate part of John did what he himself couldn’t that day—provide steady, warm companionship to Sherlock in those final moments. It’s ridiculous to imagine, John tells himself, but still he surrounds the idea in light and holds it in his heart in a place the grief can’t touch.

 

*************************

 

It’s still bitterly cold outside when he leaves, and John is still without his thickest jumper. But as he walks away from 221B Baker Street with Sherlock’s scarf wrapped tightly around his neck, John feels warmer than he has in months.


	3. Chapter 3

Sherlock hates owing Mycroft anything. That’s why he never asks him for favors. But when Mycroft comes to pull him out of that god forsaken Serbian hell hole, Sherlock can’t help himself. As if the rescue wasn’t enough, he has to ask Mycroft to do one more small thing for him, or rather to  _find_  one more small thing. He can’t go back home without it.

 

*************************

 

His return doesn’t go at all how he planned. He disguises himself as a waiter, interrupts John in the middle of proposing, and, when he reveals himself, is raged at for his deception. Repeatedly. Sherlock supposes he should have expected this, but in reality, he really hadn’t. He had been so focused on how much he missed John that he’d never even really considered what would result of John missing him. That’s why he’d ended up on the floor of a restaurant with John trying to strangle him. That’s why he's now suffering from a potential broken nose. That’s why he has found himself back at Baker Street utterly alone.

 

*************************

 

Sherlock doesn’t know if anything will ever be able to bring John back to him. John doesn’t seem to understand that Sherlock did this for him. To save him. Even though he had told John why he did it.

He tries to tell himself that all that matters is that John is alive and well, but the selfish bit of him aches at the thought of John being alive and well and  _not a part of Sherlock’s life._

A week since he came home and Sherlock has heard nothing else from John. Radio silence. Mary had said she’d talk him round, but apparently that tactic hadn’t been very successful. He's tried to wait, he really has, to let John come to him when he's ready, but he's tired of waiting. He's waited two years, and that's far more than enough. He needs to show John exactly how much he cares, to prove to him why Sherlock had to do what he did.

And he has an idea of how to do it. One thing he can try to let John know what he means. And if it doesn’t work, then he’ll know that John is really and truly lost to him.

 

*************************

 

John comes home from work to find a parcel on his doorstep, about the size of a shoebox and wrapped neatly in brown paper and twine, with _John Watson_ neatly printed across the surface in a hand he doesn’t recognize.

He has a feeling he knows where this package might have come from, and he’s not sure he’s ready to face it quite yet. He tucks it away in a drawer of his desk and heads to the kitchen to help Mary with dinner.

Later that evening after Mary has gone to bed, John sits down with a glass of scotch and the package. It takes three fingers of the liquor before he has the courage to open it. Inside he finds a small card. The all-too-familiar scrawl simply says

> _I thought it was time I returned this to you._

John pushes apart the tissue paper to find something he’d never thought he’d see again. His breath catches in his throat, and John stares and stares at the visible patch of oatmeal-colored jumper as he wills himself to remember how to breathe properly. Gently, he runs his fingers back and forth across the cable knits, remembering a night long ago full of taxi chases and laughter, Chinese food and powder burns. Gripped by the simultaneous desire to hug the jumper to him as tightly as possible and to hurl it across the room, in the end he settles for removing it from the box and holding it up to properly see it. One of the cuffs is filthy and worn, far more than the other. Leave it to Sherlock to return something of his without bothering to clean it first. Looking over the rest of the jumper, he finds a multitude of dirt spots, discolorations, holes, and snags. He even sees a few spots that look suspiciously like blood.

Oh god.

Many months ago John had thought—imagined, hoped—that maybe Sherlock had had this jumper with him when he fell from the roof of Barts. But it was more than that, he realizes. Sherlock took this jumper with him to wherever it was that he went when he left, and judging by the state of it, Sherlock was not off gallivanting around in five-star hotels and having a laugh. His return was clearly hard won, and whatever he went through, he went through it for John. And when he came back, John pushed him away.

John has never hated himself more. In the promises you make in the dark of the night in the depths of despair, he had told himself that if somehow Sherlock could ever come back to him, he wouldn’t waste another minute. He would tell him just how loved he was. And when by some miracle he had returned, just as John had secretly asked him to, John had let his anger and his pain dictate his reaction. Not anymore. He has to fix this. He has to try.

 

*************************

 

When Mrs Hudson climbs the steps to 221B, Sherlock hasn’t moved in over 16 hours. He had sent John the jumper by way of the homeless network and had waited for a response. He waited and waited, and as the evening melted away into midnight into early morning, he heard nothing. Hope poured out of him, and desolation flooded in to fill the cracks it left behind. He’s so lost in his own misery that he doesn’t notice Mrs Hudson until she shakes his shoulder and presses a small box into his hands.

“Sherlock, dear. You’ve had a delivery.”

She’s looking at him with such pity that he nearly throws the parcel at her head, but he settles for glaring until she leaves him alone again. He moves to set the package on the floor and return to his misery when he notices the writing on the top of the box. It simply says _Sherlock_ , but it’s in John’s messy, doctorly, nearly illegible handwriting. In his haste to open it, Sherlock tears the entire top off of the box. He hastily pulls out a blue scarf—one of his own, he’d know it anywhere—and stares at it in disbelief. 

He presses the scarf to his face and inhales deeply. It’s an action reminiscent of so many nights spent alone in desolate places longing for home, his face buried in a jumper that no longer smelled of John, Sherlock trying to breathe him in anyway.

Did John send this for the same reason he had sent John the jumper? Or is he merely complying with social convention and returning the gesture of gift-giving? Or is this some kind of goodbye present, and John will ask to be left alone now that he no longer has any of Sherlock’s things to hold on to?

Sherlock needs to pace. He can’t think about this sitting down. As he rises from his chair, a flutter catches his eye, a small card falling from his lap. In his haste to remove the scarf, he hadn’t even noticed it. There in John’s untidy, utterly perfect scrawl it says

> _I wanted to return something of yours, too. But it turns out I had two things that belong to you. The other one is waiting for you on your doorstep._

Sherlock can’t make it down the stairs fast enough and nearly falls on his face when he misses the bottom step entirely. He stumbles to the front door and wrenches it open.

There, beaming up at him, is John Watson.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr as [hudders-and-hiddles](http://hudders-and-hiddles.tumblr.com).


End file.
